Pan-Fried Noodles with Vegetables

In recent weeks, we've taken to celebrating our collective weight loss (about 55 pounds now) on weigh-in days, every Monday, by having a bit of a splurge dinner. The long and short of it is that we allow ourselves a few simple carbs: all stick and no carrot is no fun. This week, it was noodles. We love noodles in any way: in soup as in ramen, wet with sauce such as in lo mein, dry fried as in chow mein, and of course, Italian-style as in spaghetti aglio e olio.

This week, I decided to serve a mound of stir-fried vegetables on a cake of pan-fried noodles, a quasi Hong Kong-style dish. Call it chow mein, pan-fried noodles, or yakisoba as you will. I call it a delicious way to eat a couple hundred calories of simple carbs while still eating a pile of vegetables.

Pan-Fried Noodles with Vegetables

Frying Noodles

It all started by making a stir fry of nappa cabbage, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms, snow peas, green onions, garlic, and lots of ginger, with a splash of soy sauce for salt. And while that was cooking, I steamed some wheat noodles briefly in the microwave to limber them up and put them in a large skillet to brown into a cake, flipping halfway through.

And that's it. The vegetable prep takes a while, but the cooking is done quickly. Given that I prepped the vegetables sporadically during the afternoon, dinner was on the table in under fifteen minutes, a win all the way around.

Shrimp and Lemongrass Soup

Shrimp and Lemongrass Soup

Monday I was in the mood for light fare and I wanted soup too, so I combined the two into a very colorful bowl for dinner. This soup is all about the broth as are most soups. I made a stock from water, chicken stock, galangal, kaffir lime, smashed lemongrass, smashed garlic, shiitake stems, and snow pea trimmings. The stock simmered for 90 minutes, at which point I strained it, seasoned it with fish sauce and lime juice, brought it to a slight boil, and added the shrimp and shiitakes. Once the shrimp were nearly cooked, about two minutes, I added the fresh rice noodles for another minute.

Then I transferred some rice noodles and shrimp to each bowl, garnished with sweet pepper rings, snow peas, and cilantro, and then ladled the boiling broth over the top.

Risotto Cakes

I admit it. I put no forethought into what we would eat over Christmas break except to bring home some caviar and sparkling wine for our Christmas Day celebration. So, we get to Christmas Day dinner with nothing planned, not much in the refrigerator, and no stores open. Failure to plan: I will own it.

I'm pretty good at scrounging in the refrigerator and pantry and coming up with dinner like I did the night before when I concocted risotto from nearly nothing. That dinner yielded plenty of leftover risotto for the refrigerator and so risotto cakes were a no-brainer. To top things off, I found a few mangy snow peas that had been in the produce bin in the fridge for nearly way too long. And hey presto! Dinner.

Saffron Risotto Cakes with Snow Peas

Vegetables with Spiced Tofu

I admit that I wasn't too jazzed when I read in an email from Ann yesterday "Let's do a vegetable stir fry with tofu." But, I was in a hurry to get home and really didn't want to try to think of something different, so I just replied "OK" and grabbed a few things at FoodMaxx on the way home.

Vegetables with Spiced Tofu

I also have to admit that it really did taste very good and that my body was craving vegetables, after a week of heavy Thanksgiving eating.



Peppers, Snow Peas, Shiitakes, Green Onions, Carrots

Not shown here is a small crown of broccoli that I prepped into florets and steamed in the microwave for about four minutes before adding them to the pan to caramelize.



Spiced Tofu, Cilantro, Garlic, "Pickled Radish"

The prep took about 15 minutes of chopping and slicing during the afternoon and then it only took about 10 minutes to bring the dish to the table when Ann decided she was hungry. I seared the ingredients in three different batches to keep my pan smoking hot. This is where I miss a carbon steel wok and a smoking wok burner. ;) The heat and the smoke I don't miss.

The green onions and cilantro went in raw. And then when all was done, I put the so-called "pickled radish" into the pan and deglazed with a touch of water. In went a little bean paste, some hoisin, a little soy sauce and it all cooked for another 90 seconds at which point, I poured the sauce over the veg and tossed well.

As for the "pickled radish," that's the name on the shelf tag at the store. The packages themselves are not marked in any way in English, except for a use-by date. So, I don't really know what these sweet and spicy pickled vegetables are, other than addictively good. They are my new favorite find!

Lo Mein

Lo Mein: Wheat Noodles and Vegetables

Our dinner from last evening: very quick and easy. Boiled lo mein noodles tossed with a stir fry of lop cheung, green onions, orange bell peppers, snow peas, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and a really fun little package of sweet and spicy pickled radishes that I picked up at the store. The package wasn't labeled in English at all (and actually isn't legal for sale as it has no ingredients list or nutrition information listed, not that I care).

Faux Pho Bo

Faux Pho Bo

Yesterday, after working all day catering a dinner at Delaplane Cellars on Sunday, I moved heaven and earth at work to get my deskwork done and to get home as early as possible to spend some time with Ann. My last stop on the way home is FoodMaxx and it was there that I got a text from Ann asking if we could go out for Thai food for lunch. Knowing that it was already about 1pm and by the time I got home and got the groceries unpacked and we got back into town to the Thai restaurant, it would be every bit of 2pm, I decided that since we generally order a rice noodle soup very similar to pho, that I would just throw together a quick version at home so that we could spend more of our afternoon being with each other and less of our time scurrying about trying to get somewhere.

So I grabbed two bowls of instant pho bo, cilantro, a lime, and a pack of snow peas (because I know how much Ann loves snow peas). At home, I got a red pepper and Thai basil out of the garden and sriracha and hoisin sauce out of the cabinet. I made the soup in the microwave following the directions printed on the sides of the disposable bowls and while they were cooking, I squirted hoisin and sriracha in the bottom of big soup bowls and strung the snow peas.

Here you see the result fully garnished with cilantro, Thai basil, sweet red pepper, sriracha, hoisin, lime, and snow peas. And you know, it wasn't half bad, all doctored up like this. An OK bowl of soup in under 10 minutes: now that's my kind of lunch!

We sat outside under the umbrella and had soup along with a bottle of Taittinger Brut Française Champagne. What else to have with pho? ;)

Egg Drop Soup

Egg Drop Soup

We had planned to have guests over for dinner on Monday night, but Ann texted early morning saying she wasn't feeling well and had cancelled dinner. And then she texted to ask if I would make some soup even though we had just made soup the week before. She knows that I don't like to repeat the same things.

I decided this time rather than going the Vietnamese route, to do more of a classic Chinese soup. And then when I got home, I mentioned that I might poach an egg right in the soup so that we could break open a nice runny egg into the soup. But she asked me to make her stracciatella, the Italian version of egg drop soup.

And so I put on a big pot of water with a couple pounds of chicken necks, half a pound of ginger, some garlic, some green onion bulbs, some cilantro stems, and some celery leaves. After this cooked very slowly for about 90 minutes, I put in a whole chicken and let it poach until it was done, another couple of hours. I fished the chicken out and let it cool while I strained the broth.

From here, just a small matter of some vegetable prep: thinly sliced snow peas, straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots, pickled mustard stems, sliced green onions, and tiny baby bok choy.



Garnishes (except the chicken) Ready for Soup Bowls

Once the garnishes were prepped, I put them straight into our soup bowls and then beat a couple of eggs while the stock came back to a wicked boil. Into the stock went the eggs. And then I ladled the boiling stock into our soup bowls.


Soup Bowl Ready for Broth

I love soup. So really, no real hardship to make it two weeks running.

Pork and Snow Peas

I got up super early yesterday and as a result, I was home from doing all my paperwork by noon. My last stop before home was FoodMaxx where I scored some ground pork and snow peas for lunch.

Pork and Snow Peas

I got a large sauté pan hot and tossed in a half pound of prepped snow peas* along with a splash of water so that they would steam. Removing the steamed snow peas to a big bowl, I then put a half a pound of ground pork in the pan with a touch of oil and stirred while cooking. When 2/3 done, I added about an inch of ginger root, finely minced, and 6-8 garlic cloves (this is what we call a little), also finely minced. After stirring for a minute, in went the remaining ingredients: a diced orange pepper, a half a cup of mustard stems preserved in chile oil (cutely labeled "tasty-vegetable-go-with-meal"), half a bunch of green onions in one-inch slices, and about a dozen to fifteen garlic chives from the garden, sliced. After tossing together for a second, I splashed the pan with a touch of soy sauce and plated.

Delicious, light, low carb, quick, and moderately healthy. Not bad for a Monday lunch out on the patio with my wife.

*To prep all edible pod peas, snap the ends off, being sure to pull any fibrous strings running down the seams.

Veggies

Veggies with Roast Pork and Lop Cheung

Sometimes I get a real hankering for a big plate of stir-fried vegetables, whatever's on hand. I love vegetables of all kinds and always have. As a kid, I had two rather finicky siblings who didn't like a good number of veg between them, and so I often got double helpings of those things that they wouldn't eat. Score!

Today, we went to the store in anticipation of the snow storm tomorrow and in anticipation of having red-cooked chicken tomorrow night to score some chicken and some rock sugar for the braise. While we were there, we grabbed a can of baby corn, some gai lan (Chinese broccoli), a few hon-shimeji (Beech mushrooms), and a few snow peas to augment what we already had in the refrigerator.

From the refrigerator, I grabbed a lop cheung, a small piece of roasted pork (from the last post), nappa cabbage, cilantro, pickled mustard stems, garlic, and ginger. I had hoped to put in a bit of pressed tofu, but our leftover bit was infected with a yeast and so I decided not to take a chance.

Fifteen minutes of prep et voilà!

High heat is the key to a great stir-fried dish. If you don't have a professional wok and wok burner (I don't and most fire codes prohibit them in residential kitchens and in many restaurant kitchens as well), you need to get a pan really hot and work in batches so that you don't overload your pan. You are looking for the elusive wok hei (breath of the wok) that comes from scorching heat. If you overload your pan, your vegetables steam and don't stir fry at all. A splash of stock or water added once the vegetables begin to brown will flash steam them to a perfect crunchy cooked texture.

My little stir fry here took four batches. I started with the items that wouldn't overcook while waiting for the other batches to get done (corn, lop cheung, pork, Chinese broccoli stems, pickled mustard stems) and ended with the most tender vegetables that would overcook most easily (snow peas, Chinese broccoli blooms, and green onions).

Vegetables to warm a heart!

Roast Pork Soup

What to eat that is filling, warm, comforting, low-carb, and low fat? How about some terrifically delicious soup with roasted pork?

Roast Pork Soup: As Beautiful as it is Delicious!

There are several tricks that we chefs use to make first-rate soups. We start by jamming as much flavor into the soup stock as possible. And then we cook each of the garnishes separately so that they are at the peak of goodness. And everything is assembled at the last second before going to the table to preserve freshness of and prevent muddling of flavors. This soup is an exercise in just that.

Garnishes for the Soup

This soup has both raw and cooked garnishes, which you see in the photo above, staged for cooking. The cooked garnishes are the pork in the foreground and the green plate in the background. The raw garnishes are the cilantro, snow peas, and pickled mustard stems on the right of the photo.

Just before serving dinner, I quickly sautéed the nappa cabbage, shiitakes, carrots, pressed and spiced tofu, lop cheung sausage, and Chinese chives with finely minced ginger and garlic. After just a minute in the pan, I divided these among our deep soup bowls. Over this, I scattered the snow peas and the mustard stems. On top, I placed three small slices each of roast pork and then over all, I ladled on boiling soup stock, garnished with fresh cilantro, and rang the dinner bell.

Stock, the Key to any Great Soup

While I was prepping vegetables, I put together a stock, starting with a base of chicken stock. Into the stock I put several slabs of ginger, six lightly crushed cloves of garlic, a bunch of cilantro stems from last week, the bulb ends of a bunch of green onions from last week, the stems from the shiitake mushrooms, and the pièce de résistance, four or five fresh double kaffir lime leaves. I hadn't planned on adding lime leaves, but when I saw fresh ones in the market, I couldn't resist. Who can resist their unique and haunting citrus flavor? The stock simmered away while we watched a movie.

Hoisin-Agave Roasted Pork Loin

Early on in the afternoon, I rubbed a piece of very lean pork loin with hoisin sauce, agave nectar, and black pepper and let it sit on the counter to warm slightly before cooking. I roasted it at very high temperature for about 25 minutes to an internal temperature of 135F (knowing it would carry through to 145 or slightly higher while cooling).

All these steps and separate cooking or not of garnishes, really, is arguably a lot of fuss for a bowl of soup. But I'm a chef and this is what we do. And the results? You can't argue with them.

Zhajiangmian

Zhajiangmian with Snow Peas

Zhajiangmian ("fried sauce noodles") is one of my all-time favorite comfort dishes: there is something about noodles with a rich earthy pork and bean paste sauce that makes me tremendously happy. I first encountered it twenty or so years ago in a little hole in the wall Chinese restaurant where I ordered (it and lots of other delicious and unusual dishes) blindly from the Chinese-language only menu by pointing. I raised some eyebrows playing palette roulette this way, but I got to try a lot of great dishes and I finally trained the staff so that they would suggest dishes that I should try. It took a long time for them to figure out that they weren't going to scare me by serving pig's ears or dried jellyfish. Of all the dishes that I tried though, fried sauce noodles was one of my favorites and one of those that I have learned to make. And beyond making it, I now feel comfortable in making my own versions.

It is one of those dishes that varies each time I make it depending on what I have on hand in the refrigerator and pantry. The theme is thick wheat noodles and a sauce of bean paste and ground pork. The variations are endless.

Yesterday's variation involved two kinds of bean paste, regular Korean soy bean paste (doenjang) and spicy Korean fava bean and chile paste (dobanjang), along with soy sauce, Chinkiang black vinegar, and dark sesame oil. Garnishes always vary, but I almost always insist on pickled mustard stems (zha cai), five spice-pressed tofu, and a green vegetable, in this case, some beautiful fall snow peas. The sauce was flavored with copious amounts of both ginger and garlic and I tossed raw green onions and cilantro leaves into the noodles while tossing them with the sauce. The noodles themselves: udon.

I no longer worry about the cultural mash-up that is my zhajiangmian, for this is a dish that has been adopted all over Japan, Korea, and China and is made with whatever suitable local ingredients are available. The best noodles I can get happen to be udon and the best bean pastes I can get happen to be Korean. And who cares? The results are spectacular!

Cultural Mash-Up: Japanese, Chinese, and Korean

The Art of the Sauce: Pork and Snow Pea Lo Mein

Well, Monday was to be date night but Ann wasn't feeling up to going out and she asked me if I would make lo mein with snow peas, so I grabbed some pork neck bones, snow peas, and lo mein noodles at the market on the way home.

I have never liked the usual casual approach to making Chineses sauces: thickening broth with starch. I don't mind dredging meat in starch, frying it, then adding broth and have it thicken that way, but thickening broth with a starch slurry seems like a cop out to me, a lazy way that says the cook doesn't care enough to make a good sauce. Maybe it's my classical French sauce background coming through that drives me to make my sauces by reduction. Maybe it's the flavor: the results are spectacular.

Pork Neck Bones

Into a screaming hot pot went the meaty neckbones to brown thoroughly on all sides, a process that took about 15 minutes. At various points, I added whole garlic, slabs of ginger, green onion bulbs, a halved shallot with the skin still on, and a bunch of cilantro stems tied in a bouquet, so that each item caramelized along with the pork. In went water to cover and after deglazing the bottom of the pan, I left the pot to simmer while we watched a movie. After the movie was done, I removed the solids, reserving the neck bones, skimmed the fat from the stock, and started reducing it over high heat until I had a cup of liquid.

Meanwhile, I picked the gelatinous neck meat from the bones, Ann pulled the strings from the snow peas, and I slivered garlic and green onions. And I got a jar of young slivered bamboo shoots in spicy chile oil out of the refrigerator.

Pork and Snow Pea Lo Mein

Once the stock reduced to a cup, I added a tablespoon of Chinkiang black rice vinegar, a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sambal oelek chile paste, and enough brown sugar to balance the flavors. I brought this down to about 3/4 of a cup and adjusted the seasonings to end up with a deliciously porky, sweet, sour, spicy, and salty sauce.

While the sauce was finishing, I cooked the noodles and stir-fried the other ingredients. It was then just a matter of mixing the noodles, the garnishes, and the sauce and serving. The results were delicious and a fair amount of work for a weeknight, but really worth it in terms of flavor. You just can't duplicate the depth of flavor of a carefully crafted sauce reduction by thickening some broth with starch.

Chow Mein

Monday a week ago (I'm getting behind in posting) Ann really wanted "those noodles you make." Those noodles I make are classic chow mein, fried noodles. First you fry a pound of fresh wheat noodles on both sides:

Fry Noodles on Both Sides, Tossing to Flip

and then you top them with something delicious. In this case, a stir fry of snow peas, lop cheung, pressed tofu, dried daylily buds, tree ear mushrooms, preserved vegetable (pickled mustard stems, zha cai), garlic chives, and lots of ginger and garlic.

Chow Mein: a Thing of Beauty

If you've seen a lot of chow mein on this blog, it's because we love it, it's easy to do, and there's never a problem getting Carter to eat it.

Shrimp, Snow Pea and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

Shrimp, Snow Pea, and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

What to make for dinner isn't usually hard for me to figure out, but in the last few days, I just haven't had the cravings that send me in a particular direction. Nor has Ann. And so it was that I found myself at FoodMaxx yesterday before coming home, wandering the store quite aimlessly trying to figure something out. I know the guys stocking the produce were wondering why I, who generally gets in and gets out in 10 minutes, was wandering back and forth for 45 minutes.

I knew I wanted something fresh and crunchy but fairly light. I selected some snow peas even though they are woefully out of season knowing that Ann loves them so. For myself, I would have used gai lan, Chinese broccoli. Then I spied a beautiful orange Bell pepper and a bunch of garlic chives with buds, which for some unkown reason FoodMaxx labels Q Flower.

Over in the freezer case, I needed to see if I could find some lop cheung (sweet Chinese sausage) that didn't contain pork for a dinner I am doing later in December. No such luck: all five brands contain pork. While that means that I am going to plan B for my upcoming dinner, I did get introduced to a new brand of lop cheung from California Sausage. This sausage looks really nice and different from the other brands, so I put it in my basket to try.

Then back to the produce aisle where a few shiitakes caught my eye. Then I wandered to the seafood counter where they had beautiful large white shrimp at a great price. Into the basket with them. Meanwhile a stir fry of some sort was materializing in my mind and as I wandered by the noodles, I grabbed a package of udon thinking then about chow mein. I grabbed udon because I prefer them to the Chinese-style noodles that FoodMaxx stocks.

Back home, the assembly was easy. While Ann peeled the shrimp, I prepped the vegetables, a lot of fresh ginger, a big mound of slivered garlic, and thinly sliced lop cheung. Then I mixed some soy sauce, agave nectar, crushed red pepper flakes, and Chinese Zhenjiang black vinegar (Chinkiang brand).

I fried the noodles en masse in a skillet and then flipped them to crisp both sides. The resulting pancake I slid onto a platter where it waited while I stir fried the topping and then added the sauce and reduced it.

After all the work I put into figuring out what to have for dinner, I think I got it right! It was just what the doctor ordered. And the new brand of lop cheung was fantastic, the best I've ever had!

Chow Mein

Snow Pea and Shrimp Chow Mein

Ann and I went all over town on Sunday running errands and doing things that I would normally do on Monday, which would not be possible because of the Memorial Day holiday. Needless to say, all those errands and food shopping on an empty stomach made for a couple of hungry people. Good thing Food Maxx was one stop on the way home! Ann wanted noodles, Asian, of some unspecified variety. I'm easy that way. All I need is an idea and I am off cooking.

We bought some udon, preserved vegetable, green onions, and snow peas and during the drive home, I was thinking soup with udon, but then it was 90+ degrees in the shade and I don't think either of us were feeling a hot bowl of soup, no matter  how good. So while I was prepping, I asked Ann about the udon, "stir-fried or in a broth?" "Stir-fried!" we both blurted out simultaneously. Jinx.

At that point I was thinking lo mein, noodles mixed with the vegetables, but then that all went out the door when I remembered how awesome good chow mein is, crispy pan-fried noodles topped with a garnish, not the gloppy crap that they used to (and I presume still do) serve in the 60's and 70's in bad American Chinese restaurants.

I put the udon into a large skillet and crisped them first on one side and then on the other, making a cake of crispy goodness that I transferred to a platter while I quickly stir-fried the garnish: snow peas, garlic, ginger, preserved vegetable, pre-cooked shrimp, and green onions. Once this was going, I added a large pinch (1/2 a teaspoon or more) of ground white pepper, a big splash of fish sauce, and a bit of water. I let this reduce for a minute or so and poured the whole over the noodles.

Mise en Place: It Makes Cooking so Much Simpler

 Our lunch, this mutt of a dish, classic Chinese preparation mixed with Japanese noodles and Thai spicing, was absolutely amazing, one of the best off-the-cuff dishes I've ever made. Paired with a delicious Riesling halbtrocken, it made for a memorable lunch.

Noodles with Pork, Green Onions, and Snow Peas

I wasn't feeling well yesterday and the weather was turning chilly again: I needed comfort food. In the morning, when Ann and I were discussing dinner—isn't that a primary topic of conversation for all couples?—she said, "It's getting cooler; let's have something wintery one more time before it gets hot." Both of us on the same page is always a good place to start. "Or let's go out!" Oops, maybe both of us not on the same page.

I just didn't feel up to going out and so I brought home a few things to make a bowl of noodles. Noodles and soup noodles are my go-tos when I am not feeling well. Here you see my mise for dinner: wheat noodles, green onions, doenjang, preserved vegetable, sambal oelek (the jar just barely in the photo), snowpeas, garlic, ginger, and ground pork. I didn't bring the snow peas home; they were a lucky find in the refrigerator. Doenjang is a Korean soybean paste. I like it better than most Chinese bean paste because it still has some whole or partial beans in it for texture. Preserved vegetable is a mustard green that has been cured in salt and chile. Sambal oelek is ground fresh red jalapeño chiles.